“TWO STEPS FORWARD…”

South Africa has demonstrated that it can rise to a challenge. By all accounts, the 2010 soccer World Cup was a resounding success. The venues did not collapse; transportation more or less worked; the visitors were not subjected to massive rape, robbery and pillage as some foreign newspapers had suggested would be the case for anyone foolish enough to make the trip.

So why can’t South Africa rise to its social challenges? Why is it that more than 40% of the population is unemployed? Why is it that economists keep saying South Africa is falling behind the rest of the continent in terms of education and skills development? Why is it that this country cannot get a handle on HIV/AIDS?

I’m not the only one asking these questions. Helen Zille, leader of the opposition party here, raised the same issues yesterday as the South African parliament listened to President Zuma praise the country’s stellar performance during the soccer tournament. Zille said the World Cup was a success because for once, government officials worked together, committed to delivering on time. In her analysis, all spheres of government pulled together because “every other risk paled into significance compared with the catastrophe of missing deadlines set by Fifa,” the international soccer federation.

Do-gooders always complain that hosting mega events such as the World Cup detracts attention and drains resources from social programs. I don’t subscribe to that argument. I believe that sports are important in terms of social cohesion and physical fitness and that mega events can produce economic benefits, if managed properly.

What I do not believe is that South Africans might consider the World Cup to be more important than their own health, education and welfare. Because I don’t believe that, I do NOT understand why people here do not demand more of their government. Even the poorest people in the world know that others live better. It does not take a lot of education to want more for yourself and for your children.

Every now and then, I see signs of hope that South Africa is trying to meet its social challenges. For instance, the government last year launched an ambitious program to test 15 MILLION South Africans for HIV by April, 2011. To facilitate that effort, lay counselors were taught to conduct the finger prick test for the virus to make up for the shortage of trained doctors and nurses. It sounded good.

Now, we find that the lay counselors are threatening to walk out of clinics because they haven’t been paid. Lay counselors in two provinces say they have been without a paycheck for five months! Counselors from Johannesburg and Soweto plan to march to Pretoria today to present their demands to the national health department.

It seems that the government, in its zeal to make headlines on National AIDS Day, made promises without  identifying the necessary funds. So, here we are, a year later, and the program already is falling apart. Everyone remembers the media splash when Zuma announced the program. News of the program’s shortcomings barely gets a headline.

I’ve always believed that people get the government they deserve. If government fails you, DO something about it. Yet in South Africa, no one does much about any of this. There is no national outrage, except from the NGOs and political opposition, neither of which has much clout.

South African author and acerbic social critic Rian Malan writes that for the past two decades, South Africa “has been stricken almost weekly by scandals that would have toppled governments in the West but seem almost meaningless here…When these stories break, you think they’re going to tear the country apart and alter everything forever. But they don’t. They linger for a week or two and then fade into oblivion, blown off the front pages by the next dumbfounding scandal. The ordinary laws of cause and effect don’t seem to apply here.” (excerpt from “Resident Alien”).

It’s as if this country is sleepwalking while politicians and their cronies grab all they can at the expense of the nation. Someone needs to set a very loud alarm clock.

Vicky O’Hara

ORPHAN BRACELET CAMPAIGN (www.orphanbracelet.org)

Johannesburg

August 19, 2010

 

A Right to Play, A Right to Live!

The 2010 soccer World Cup in South Africa is an amazing display of national unity among the fractured South Africans. It’s a display of skill and courage by athletes, and enterprise by everyone surrounding the tournament, including the Orphan Bracelet Campaign (www.orphanbracelet.org). The thousands of journalists and hundreds of thousands of visitors who have landed on South African soil for the World Cup represent an opportunity that we could not miss. So, our own Terry Myburgh arranged a booth at the World Cup stadium in Durban, in partnership with the South African Tuberculosis Association (aka  SANTA, a non-profit, volunteer community-based organization founded in 1947).

We handed out information about the HIV/AIDS epidemic here, answered questions, and sold the lovely bracelets made in South Africa that fund our various projects in support of AIDS orphans and HIV/AIDS-infected women. Terry says lots of local guest houses are supporting our project by supplying bracelets to their guests. Everyone who boards a plane, train or bus with one of our bracelets will help to spread the word about the scale of the epidemic and the level of human suffering in South Africa as a consequence, especially among women and children.

South Africa has done a very good job of cleaning up its “public face” for the World Cup. The government would prefer that visitors spending lavish amounts of money to enjoy high-level soccer not be confronted with the misery that is a fact of life for large numbers of people in this country. Vagrants and beggars have been rounded up and moved elsewhere. Shacks in soccer venue cities have been demolished. Police patrol streets to protect the visitors from South Africa’s reality.

But we know what is happening here…  thus we are at the World Cup… not to tarnish the games or the country, but to enlist the support of the world in fighting a disease that too many would prefer to ignore. BUY a BRACELET and tell a friend!

Vicky O’Hara

June 29, 2010

Johannesburg

 

A Sporting Chance!

South Africans are ecstatic over the World Cup… first one ever to be played on African soil. They should be proud. There were so many skeptics who said the country could never pull it together in time to host an international extravaganza of that magnitude.

(Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Well, the World Cup starts next Friday, and South Africa is in pretty good shape. The major new roads are finished (or will be, we hope), new buses are running, the fast, new train from the airport into Jo’burg becomes operational on Tuesday. The flags are up and the “vuvuzela” has become the audio signature of the World Cup, South African style.

In southern Africa, soccer players represent something that most poor children can only dream of… an escape from poverty. Very much like children in Central America, soccer is a beacon… a pathway to a better life for them and their families.

But there are so many children here who can’t even venture to dream. They are the victims of HIV/AIDS. Some are infected, but many simply have lost one or both parents to the virus. They have no hope, no future.

(Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)

That is why DO Ubuntu Orphan Bracelet volunteers are GOING TO THE WORLD CUP! The world’s biggest international soccer event offers a wonderful opportunity to showcase the work that the Orphan Bracelet Campaign has undertaken in support of AIDS orphans in South Africa. Volunteers will be deployed at a booth inside the World Cup stadium in Durban. They will hand out information about the cause, sell “orphan bracelets” and generally enlist the support that is so vital to keep the campaign alive.  The Orphan Bracelet Campaign was offered to share the booth with the South African National Tuberculosis Association (aka  SANTA, a non-profit, volunteer community-based organization founded in 1947).

South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council estimates that up to three million children in this country are orphans… as a result of HIV/AIDS, TB, alcohol, drug abuse, you name it. The South African health system is ill-equipped to deal with them, especially in rural areas.

Wear one or more to show your support

That is where the Orphan Bracelet Campaign steps up to the plate. The program provides income to local women to make the beautiful bracelets that in turn are sold internationally, to fund  feeding programs, orphanages, and job training for HIV/AIDS infected women.

The World Cup is a celebration of physical vitally, determination, talent, heart. All of the children of Africa should have the opportunity to aspire to be soccer players OR nurses, doctors, lawyers, whatever they want to be. Give them a sporting chance. Wear your Orphan Bracelet to help spread the word and show your support!  (You can buy your Orphan Bracelet here).

Vicky O’Hara

Johannesburg, South Africa

June 6, 2010

 

Blog for Bracelets!

March 30, 2010

This is day one of my involvement in the DO Ubuntu Orphan Bracelet Campaign, day one of implementing the “DO unto others” principle that underlies the Orphan Bracelet mission: saving the lives of mothers and children affected by HIV/AIDS.

I’m still getting acquainted with all of the projects and anticipated projects funded by the worldwide sale of bracelets, but already the tragedies involving South African orphans and HIV-infected women are piling up in my head. Take the story of “Amy.”

"Amy"

Her mother went off and left this toddler with two 10-year-old boys, saying she was going shopping. She never returned. The boys took the toddler to the police, who turned her over to the Molly Bam Orphanage in Alexandria,  South Africa (Check out the orphanage at http://www.orphanbracelet.org/what-we-do/molly-bam-orphanage), where the Orphan Bracelet Campaign is helping to fund an addition to the home.

The first night at the orphanage, the toddler vomited blood. The staff took her to the hospital, where she tested positive for HIV and TB. The staff named the toddler “Amy” and finally traced her parents.  Her father is a 65-year-old white man. The mother is his 24-year-old housekeeper.

Initially, the father insisted he was not HIV-positive. However, he now has asked Molly Bam, who runs the orphanage, where he can get tested…a positive drop in a sea of negative events.

It is impossible to live in South Africa without personally confronting the tragedies caused by the vicious circle of illiteracy/poverty/HIV-AIDS. EVERYONE knows someone who has died of AIDS. I had not been in Johannesburg for more than three months when the brother of my gardener went home to die in his own country, Malawi.

In South Africa, you turn your back on the victims of HIV at your peril. This country has a generation of children growing up without parents and very likely, without an education. No education means lack of access to employment. So what will happen to these young people? Check out South Africa’s crime statistics (http://www.pascorisk.com/world-cup-2010/south-africas-crime-statistics-what-it-means-for-2010) and then go buy an orphan bracelet.

More later,

Vicky